Lateral forces on circularly polarizable particles near a surface

Optical forces allow manipulation of small particles and control of nanophotonic structures with light beams. While some techniques rely on structured light to move particles using field intensity gradients, acting locally, other optical forces can push particles on a wide area of illumination but only in the direction of light propagation. Here we show that spin orbit coupling, when the spin of the incident circularly polarized light is converted into lateral electromagnetic momentum, leads to a lateral optical force acting on particles placed above a substrate, associated with a recoil mechanical force. This counterintuitive force acts in a direction in which the illumination has neither a field gradient nor propagation. The force direction is switchable with the polarization of uniform, plane wave illumination, and its magnitude is comparable to other optical forces.This work has been supported, in part, by EPSRC (UK). A.V.Z. acknowledges support from the Royal Society and the Wolfson Foundation. N.E. acknowledges partial support from the US Office of Naval Research Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative Grant No. N00014-10-1-0942. A.M. acknowledges support from the Spanish Government (contract Nos TEC2011-28664-C02-02 and TEC2014-51902-C2-1-R).Rodríguez Fortuño, FJ.; Engheta, N.; Martínez Abietar, AJ.; Zayats, AV. (2015). Lateral forces on circularly polarizable particles near a surface. Nature Communications. 6(8799):1-7. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms9799S1768799Novotny, L. & Hecht, B. Principles of Nano-Optics Cambridge University Press (2011).Jackson, J. D. Classical Electrodynamics Wiley (1998).Ashkin, A. & Dziedzic, J. M. Optical levitation by radiation pressure. Appl. Phys. Lett. 19, 283 (1971).Ashkin, A. Acceleration and trapping of particles by radiation pressure. Phys. Rev. Lett. 24, 156–159 (1970).Omori, R., Kobayashi, T. & Suzuki, A. Observation of a single-beam gradient-force optical trap for dielectric particles in air. Opt. Lett. 22, 816–818 (1997).Ashkin, A., Dziedzic, J. M., Bjorkholm, J. E. & Chu, S. Observation of a single-beam gradient force optical trap for dielectric particles. Opt. Lett. 11, 288–290 (1986).Ashkin, A., Dziedzic, J. M. & Yamane, T. Optical trapping and manipulation of single cells using infrared laser beams. Nature 330, 769–771 (1987).Bagnato, V. S. et al. Continuous stopping and trapping of neutral atoms. Phys. Rev. Lett. 58, 2194–2197 (1987).Phillips, W. D. Nobel lecture: laser cooling and trapping of neutral atoms. Rev. Mod. Phys. 70, 721–741 (1998).Wang, M. M. et al. Microfluidic sorting of mammalian cells by optical force switching. Nat. Biotechnol. 23, 83–87 (2005).Dholakia, K. & Čižmár, T. Shaping the future of manipulation. Nat. Photon. 5, 335–342 (2011).Zhao, R., Zhou, J., Koschny, T., Economou, E. N. & Soukoulis, C. M. Repulsive Casimir force in chiral metamaterials. Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 103602 (2009).Leonhardt, U. & Philbin, T. G. Quantum levitation by left-handed metamaterials. New J. Phys. 9, 254–254 (2007).Ginis, V., Tassin, P., Soukoulis, C. M. & Veretennicoff, I. Enhancing optical gradient forces with metamaterials. Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 057401 (2013).Rodríguez-Fortuño, F. J., Vakil, A. & Engheta, N. Electric levitation using ɛ-near-zero metamaterials. Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 033902 (2014).Grier, D. G. A revolution in optical manipulation. Nature 424, 810–816 (2003).Yang, X., Liu, Y., Oulton, R. F., Yin, X. & Zhang, X. Optical forces in hybrid plasmonic waveguides. Nano Lett. 11, 321–328 (2011).Oskooi, A., Favuzzi, P. A., Kawakami, Y. & Noda, S. Tailoring repulsive optical forces in nanophotonic waveguides. Opt. Lett. 36, 4638 (2011).Shalin, A. S., Ginzburg, P., Belov, P. A., Kivshar, Y. S. & Zayats, A. V. Nano-opto-mechanical effects in plasmonic waveguides. Laser Photon. Rev. 8, 131–136 (2014).Abajo, F. J. G., de, Brixner, T. & Pfeiffer, W. Nanoscale force manipulation in the vicinity of a metal nanostructure. J. Phys. B At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 40, S249–S258 (2007).Juan, M. L., Righini, M. & Quidant, R. Plasmon nano-optical tweezers. Nat. Photon. 5, 349–356 (2011).Beth, R. Mechanical detection and measurement of the angular momentum of light. Phys. Rev. 50, 115–125 (1936).Padgett, M. & Bowman, R. Tweezers with a twist. Nat. Photon. 5, 343–348 (2011).Liu, M., Zentgraf, T., Liu, Y., Bartal, G. & Zhang, X. Light-driven nanoscale plasmonic motors. Nat. Nanotechnol. 5, 570–573 (2010).Marston, P. L. & Crichton, J. H. Radiation torque on a sphere caused by a circularly-polarized electromagnetic wave. Phys. Rev. A 30, 2508–2516 (1984).Sokolov, I. V. The angular momentum of an electromagnetic wave, the Sadovski effect, and the generation of magnetic fields in a plasma. Phys. Uspekhi 34, 925–932 (1991).Wang, S. B. & Chan, C. T. Lateral optical force on chiral particles near a surface. Nat. Commun. 5, 3307 (2014).Hayat, A., Müller, J. P. B. & Capasso, F. Lateral chirality-sorting optical forces. doi:10.1073/pnas.1516704112 (2015).Bliokh, K. Y., Bekshaev, A. Y. & Nori, F. Extraordinary momentum and spin in evanescent waves. Nat. Commun. 5, 3300 (2014).Antognozzi, M. et al. Direct measurement of the extraordinary optical momentum using a nano-cantilever. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/1506.04248 (2015).Bekshaev, A. Y., Bliokh, K. Y. & Nori, F. Transverse spin and momentum in two-wave interference. Phys. Rev. X 5, 011039 (2015).Bliokh, K. Y., Smirnova, D. & Nori, F. Quantum spin Hall effect of light. Science 348, 1448–1451 (2015).Rodríguez-Fortuño, F. J. et al. Near-field interference for the unidirectional excitation of electromagnetic guided modes. Science 340, 328–330 (2013).Kapitanova, P. V. et al. Photonic spin Hall effect in hyperbolic metamaterials for polarization-controlled routing of subwavelength modes. Nat. Commun. 5, 3226 (2014).Bliokh, K. Y., Rodríguez-Fortuño, F. J., Nori, F. & Zayats, A. V. Spin-orbit interactions of light. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.02864 (2015).O’Connor, D., Ginzburg, P., Rodríguez-Fortuño, F. J., Wurtz, G. A. & Zayats, A. V. Spin–orbit coupling in surface plasmon scattering by nanostructures. Nat. Commun. 5, 5327 (2014).Neugebauer, M., Bauer, T., Banzer, P. & Leuchs, G. Polarization tailored light driven directional optical nanobeacon. Nano Lett. 14, 2546–2551 (2014).Mueller, J. P. B. & Capasso, F. Asymmetric surface plasmon polariton emission by a dipole emitter near a metal surface. Phys. Rev. B 88, 121410 (2013).Xi, Z. et al. Controllable directive radiation of a circularly polarized dipole above planar metal surface. Opt. Express 21, 30327 (2013).Carbonell, J. et al. Directive excitation of guided electromagnetic waves through polarization control. Phys. Rev. B 89, 155121 (2014).Young, A. B. et al. Polarization engineering in photonic crystal waveguides for spin-photon entanglers. Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 153901 (2015).Mitsch, R., Sayrin, C., Albrecht, B., Schneeweiss, P. & Rauschenbeutel, A. Quantum state-controlled directional spontaneous emission of photons into a nanophotonic waveguide. Nat. Commun. 5, 5713 (2014).Le Kien, F. & Rauschenbeutel, A. Anisotropy in scattering of light from an atom into the guided modes of a nanofiber. Phys. Rev. A 90, 023805 (2014).Luxmoore, I. J. et al. Interfacing spins in an InGaAs quantum dot to a semiconductor waveguide circuit using emitted photons. Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 037402 (2013).Rodríguez-Fortuño, F. J. et al. Universal method for the synthesis of arbitrary polarization states radiated by a nanoantenna. Laser Photon. Rev. 8, L27–L31 (2014).Rodríguez-Fortuño, F. J., Barber-Sanz, I., Puerto, D., Griol, A. & Martinez, A. Resolving light handedness with an on-chip silicon microdisk. ACS Photon. 1, 762–767 (2014).Petersen, J., Volz, J. & Rauschenbeutel, A. Chiral nanophotonic waveguide interface based on spin-orbit interaction of light. Science 346, 67–71 (2014).Xi, Z., Lu, Y., Yu, W., Wang, P. & Ming, H. Unidirectional surface plasmon launcher: rotating dipole mimicked by optical antennas. J. Opt. 16, 105002 (2014).Frisch, R. Experimental demonstration of Einstein’s radiation recoil. Zeitschrift für Phys. 86, 42–45 (1933).Wylie, J. M. & Sipe, J. E. Quantum electrodynamics near an interface. II. Phys. Rev. A 32, 2030–2043 (1985).Fichet, M., Schuller, F., Bloch, D. & Ducloy, M. van der Waals interactions between excited-state atoms and dispersive dielectric surfaces. Phys. Rev. A 51, 1553–1564 (1995).Failache, H., Saltiel, S., Fichet, M., Bloch, D. & Ducloy, M. Resonant van der Waals repulsion between excited Cs atoms and sapphire surface. Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 5467–5470 (1999).Gordon, J. P. & Ashkin, A. Motion of atoms in a radiation trap. Phys. Rev. A 21, 1606–1617 (1980).Chaumet, P. C. & Nieto-Vesperinas, M. Time-averaged total force on a dipolar sphere in an electromagnetic field. Opt. Lett. 25, 1065–1067 (2000).Ishimaru, A. Electromagnetic Wave Propagation, Radiation, and Scattering Prentice Hall (1990).Söllner, I., Mahmoodian, S., Javadi, A. & Lodahl, P. A chiral spin-photon interface for scalable on-chip quantum-information processing. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.4295 (2014).Rotenberg, N. et al. Magnetic and electric response of single subwavelength holes. Phys. Rev. B Condens. Matter Mater. Phys. 88, 241408 (2013).Sukhov, S., Kajorndejnukul, V. & Dogariu, A. Dynamic Consequences of Optical Spin-Orbit Interaction. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.01766 (2015).Scheel, S., Buhmann, S. Y., Clausen, C. & Schneeweiss, P. Directional spontaneous emission and lateral Casimir-Polder force on an atom close to a nanofiber. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.01275 (2015).Rodríguez-Fortuño, F. J., Engheta, N., Martínez, A. & Zayats, A. V. Lateral Forces Acting on Particles Near a Surface Under Circularly Polarized Illumination. in 5th Inte rnational Topical Meeting on Nanophotonics and Metamaterials (Nanometa) (2-914771-91-6, Seefeld, Austria 2015).Bochenkov, V. et al. Applications of plasmonics: general discussion. Faraday Discuss. 178, 435–466 (2015).Dogariu, A. & Schwartz, C. Conservation of angular momentum of light in single scattering. Opt. Express 14, 8425–8433 (2006).Haefner, D., Sukhov, S. & Dogariu, A. Spin hall effect of light in spherical geometry. Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 123903 (2009).Bliokh, K. Y. et al. Spin-to-orbit angular momentum conversion in focusing, scattering, and imaging systems. Opt. Express 19, 26132–26149 (2011)

Terahertz metamaterials on flexible polypropylene substrate

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11468-014-9724-1In this work, we present a metamaterial working at terahertz frequencies made over a flexible polypropylene sub-strate. The experimental measurements, in accordance with the numerical calculations, show the metamaterial reliance on the impinging electric field polarization. The structure s symmetry yields purely electrical resonant responses eliminating bianisotropy effects. The widely used bendable polypropylene polymer may promote the insertion of metamaterial-based structures with special electromagnetic response in a number of objects of our daily lives such as textiles, automotive components, and sensingThis work was supported by the Spanish MICINN under contracts CONSOLIDER EMET CSD2008-00066 and TEC2011-28664-C02-02 and by the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia under the program INNOVA 2011.Ortuño Molinero, R.; García Meca, C.; Martínez Abietar, AJ. (2014). Terahertz metamaterials on flexible polypropylene substrate. Plasmonics. 9(5):1143-1147. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11468-014-9724-1S1143114795Smith DR, Padilla WJ, Vier DC, Nemat-Nasser SC, Schultz S (2000) Composite medium with simultaneously negative permeability and permittivity. Phys Rev Lett 84:4184–4187Pendry JB (2000) Negative refraction makes a perfect lens. Phys Rev Lett 85:3966–3969Zhang X, Liu Z (2008) Superlenses to overcome the diffraction limit. Nat Mater 7:435–441Pendry JB, Schurig D, Smith DR (2006) Controlling electromagnetic fields. Science 312:1780–1782Schurig D, Mock JJ, Justice BJ, Cummer SA, Pendry JB, Starr AF, Smith DR (2006) Metamaterial electromagnetic cloak at microwave frequencies. Science 314:977–980Rodríguez-Cantó PJ, Martínez-Marco M, Rodríguez-Fortuño FJ, Tomás-Navarro B, Ortuño R, Peransí-Llopis S, Martínez A (2011) Demonstration of near infrared gas sensing using gold nanodisks on functionalized silicon. Opt Express 19:7664–7672Rodríguez-Fortuño FJ, Martínez-Marco M, Tomás-Navarro B, Ortuño R, Martí J, Martínez A, Rodríguez-Cantó PJ (2011) Highly-sensitive chemical detection in the infrared regime using plasmonic gold nanocrosses. Appl Phys Lett 98:133118O’Hara FJ, Singh R, Brener I, Smirnova E, Han J, Taylor AJ, Zhang W (2008) Thin-film sensing with planar terahertz metamaterials: sensitivity and limitations. Opt Express 16:1786–1795Tao H, Landy NI, Bingham CM, Zhang X, Averitt RD, Padilla WJ (2008) A metamaterial absorber for the terahertz regime: design, fabrication and characterization. Opt Express 16:7181–7188Iwaszczuk K, Strikwerda AC, Fan K, Zhang X, Averitt RD, Jepsen PU (2012) Flexible metamaterial absorbers for stealth applications at terahertz frequencies. Opt Express 20:635–643Tao H, Bingham CM, Strikwerda AC, Pilon D, Shrekenhamer D, Landy NI, Fan K, Zhang X, Padilla WJ, Averitt RD (2008) Highly flexible wide angle of incidence terahertz metamaterial absorber: design, fabrication, and characterization. Phys Rev B 78:241103(R)Tao H, Bingham CM, Pilon D, Fan K, Strikwerda AC, Shrekenhamer D, Padilla WJ, Zhang X, Averitt RD (2010) A dual band terahertz metamaterial absorber. J Phys D: Appl Phys 43:225102Padilla WJ, Taylor AJ, Highstrete C, Lee M, Averitt RD (2006) Dynamical electric and magnetic metamaterial response at terahertz frequencies. Phys Rev Lett 96:107401Chen HT, Padilla WJ, Zide JMO, Gossard AC, Taylor AJ, Averitt RD (2006) Active terahertz metamaterial devices. Nature 444:597–600Chen HT, O’Hara FJ, Azad AK, Taylor AJ, Averitt RD, Shrekenhamer DB, Padilla WJ (2008) Experimental demonstration of frequency-agile terahertz metamaterials. Nature Photon 2:295–298Chen HT, Padilla WJ, Zide JMO, Bank SR, Gossard AC, Taylor AJ, Averitt RD (2007) Ultrafast optical switching of terahertz metamaterials fabricated on ErAs/GaAs nanoisland superlattices. Opt Lett 32:1620–1622Chen HT, Palit S, Tyler T, Bingham CM, Zide JMO, O’Hara FJ, Smith DR, Gossard AC, Averitt RD, Padilla WJ, Jokerst NM, Taylor AJ (2008) Hybrid metamaterials enable fast electrical modulation of freely propagating terahertz waves. Appl Phys Lett 93:091117Chen HT, Padilla WJ, Cich MJ, Azad AK, Averitt RD, Taylor AJ (2009) A metamaterial solid-state terahertz phase modulator. Nat Photon 3:148Driscoll T, Andreev GO, Basov DN, Palit S, Cho SY, Jokerst NM, Smith DR (2007) Tuned permeability in terahertz split-ring resonators for devices and sensors. Appl Phys Lett 91:062511Debus C, Bolivar PH (2007) Frequency selective surfaces for high sensitivity terahertz sensing. Appl Phys Lett 91:184102Al-Naib IAI, Jansen C, Koch M (2008) Thin-film sensing with planar asymmetric metamaterial resonators. Appl Phys Lett 93:083507Leonhardt U, Philbin TG (2010) Geometry and light: the science of invisibility. Dover, MineolaDi Falco A, Ploschner M, Krauss TF (2010) Flexible metamaterials at visible wavelengths. New J Phys 12:113006Tao H, Strikwerda AC, Fan K, Bingham CM, Padilla WJ, Zhang X, Averitt RD (2008) Terahertz metamaterials on free-standing highly-flexible polyimide substrates. Appl Phys 41:232004Tao H, Amsden JJ, Strikwerda AC, Fan K, Kaplan DL, Zhang X, Averitt RD, Omenetto FJ (2010) Metamaterial silk composites at terahertz frequencies. Adv Mater 22:3527–3531Chen ZC, Han NR, Pan ZY, Gong YD, Chong TC, Hong MH (2011) Tunable resonance enhancement of multi-layer terahertz metamaterials fabricated by parallel laser micro-lens array lithography on flexible substrates. Opt Mat Express 1:151–157Miyamaru F, Takeda MW, Taima K (2009) Characterization of terahertz metamaterials fabricated on flexible plastic films: toward fabrication of bulk metamaterials in terahertz region. Appl Phys Express 2:042001Peralta XG, Wanke MC, Arrington CL, Williams JD, Brener I, Strikwerda A, Averitt RD, Padilla WJ, Smirnova W, Taylor AJ, O’Hara FJ (2009) Large-area metamaterials on thin membranes for multilayer and curved applications at terahertz and higher frequencies. Appl Phys Lett 94:161113Choi M, Lee SH, Kim Y, Kang SB, Shin J, Kwak MH, Kang KY, Lee YH, Park N, Min B (2011) A terahertz metamaterial with unnaturally high refractive index. Nature 470:369–373Han NR, Chen ZC, Lim CS, Ng B, Hong MH (2011) Broadband multi-layer terahertz metamaterials fabrication and characterization on flexible substrates. Opt Express 19:6990–6998Aznabet M, Navarro-Cia N, Kuznetsov SA, Gelfand AV, Fedorinina NI, Goncharov YG, Beruete M, Mrabet OE, Sorolla M (2008) Polypropylene-substrate-based SRR- and CSRR- metasurfaces for submillimeter waves. Opt Express 16:18312–18319Padilla WJ, Aronsson MT, Highstrete C, Lee M, Taylor AJ, Averitt RD (2007) Electrically resonant terahertz metamaterials: theoretical and experimental investigations. Phys Rev B 75:041102(R)Chen HT, O’Hara FJ, Taylor AJ, Averitt RD, Highstrete C, Lee M, Padilla WJ (2007) Complementary planar terahertz metamaterials. Opt Express 15:1084–1095Pendry JB, Holden AJ, Robbins DJ, Stewart WJ (1999) Magnetism from conductors and enhanced nonlinear phenomena. IEEE Trans Microwave Theory Tech 47:2075–208

Universal switching of plasmonic signals using optical resonator modes

We propose and investigate, both experimentally and theoretically, a novel mechanism for switching and modulating plasmonic signals based on a Fano interference process, which arises from the coupling between a narrow-band optical Fabry–Pérot cavity and a surface plasmon polariton (SPP) source. The SPP wave emitted from the cavity is actively modulated in the vicinity of the cavity resonances by altering the cavity Q-factor and/or resonant frequencies. We experimentally demonstrate dynamic SPP modulation both by mechanical control of the cavity length and all-optically by harnessing the ultrafast nonlinearity of the Au mirrors that form the cavity. An electro-optical modulation scheme is also proposed and numerically illustrated. Dynamic operation of the switch via mechanical means yields a modulation in the SPP coupling efficiency of ~ 80%, while the all-optical control provides an ultrafast modulation with an efficiency of 30% at a rate of ~ 0.6 THz. The experimental observations are supported by both analytical and numerical calculations of the mechanical, all-optical and electro-optical modulation methods